Daughters say father drove up to 100 mph while they opened beers for him

Detroit Lakes Minnesota 511 Washington Avenue 56501

MOORHEAD – A 47-year-old Moorhead man is charged with felony drunken driving after his twin 12-year-old daughters told police their father was driving up to 100 mph with them in the car, drinking beers he had the girls open for him.

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Thomas Eugene Iverson, 47, is charged in Clay County District Court with two counts of felony driving while intoxicated and two counts of endangering a child in a situation that could cause harm or death, a gross misdemeanor.

According to court documents filed in the case Monday, Iverson was pulled over by a Clay County deputy Friday at 8:48 p.m. for speeding “well in excess” of the 30-mph speed limit on Highway 10 in Dilworth.

Court documents state the deputy saw Iverson swerve and nearly hit a parked car as the deputy pulled him over. Iverson had red, watery eyes and slurred speech as he spoke to the deputy, appeared confused and couldn’t pass field sobriety tests, authorities allege in the complaint.

According to the complaint, Iverson registered a blood alcohol concentration of 0.189 percent on a portable Breathalyzer test, later testing at the Clay County Law Enforcement Center at a BAC of 0.24 percent – three times the legal limit for driving.

When the deputy explained to two girls in the car that their father was being arrested for drunken driving, they told him they’d been scared and that their father had been driving between 90 and 100 mph. The girls told the deputy their father was drinking while driving the car, and that he’d been having the children open his beers for him.

One of the girls told the deputy she’d pretended to throw up to try to get her father to slow down, according to the complaint.

Iverson was arrested and taken to the Clay County Jail. He posted $12,000 bail on Monday to be released without conditions.

He has at least three prior drunken-driving convictions, according to court records – one each in Minnesota and North Dakota from February 2010, and one in North Dakota in August 2008.

The maximum prison time on a felony DWI conviction in Minnesota is seven years.

The Forum Communications News Service is the premier news wire service covering the Upper Midwest, stretching from the oilfields of western North Dakota to the plains of South Dakota and to the shores of eastern Minnesota.
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